“Hi, my name is Drew and I’m calling on behalf of the Wake County Parks and Recreation Department. The City would like your input on parks, trails, and green way priorities for this coming year. Would you be interested in taking a short survey with me? Wake County would sincerely like you to…”

“Fuck off.”

Somewhere in Wake County, a phone hangs up.

I keep the receiver next to my chin as I pencil in “RF30″ on the little pink slip in front of me. I push the slip to the right and grab a fresh slip from my left. Marked slips go to the right; new slips are on the left. They look like Monopoly money. These slips keep track of the responses we’re getting to our survey and there are special codes for each type of interaction I’m anticipated to have while on the phone. The “RF” is for “refusal/no response.” It’s the most common. And the “30”? Well, that’s me. I’m 30. It’s written on the white board above my cubicle in case I ever forget.

I never will though.

***

During the last few months of 2013, I started applying to lots of jobs at NC State University. At the time, I was substitute teaching for high schools during the day and picking up shifts at a local coffee shop at night. I was fairly content with that scenario all things considered, but figured I’d start exploring other options just to be safe in the event I lost my cool at a school and slapped the shit out of a 9th grader. It was only a matter of time until I did. One day, while I was expecting an email for a third round interview to be a PR guy for the Genetic Engineering Department, I got an email from a random contact saying there’s an immediate need for a call center worker. I’ve already been cleared by the university and can start tonight if I want. That sounded like a nice change of pace from making soy lattes, so I close my laptop and go to the address they provided in the email.

***

This call center is located on the second floor of a low key office building. To get up there, I call the supervisor on this phone next to an elevator and wait for the doors to open. The call center is really just a dimly lit room with a coffee maker and couple of cubicles up against a wall. The rest of the second floor is just office space for other departments, but, since I work at night, all of the lights are off whenever I’m here. My little office is a beacon of light in the vast darkness, along with the Coke machine at the end of the hall. Mrs. Percy is my supervisor. She’s a witty middle-age black woman who likes Fritos. She shows me my desk and my phone.

I just stand there and look at the desk feeling like I got kicked in the stomach. A miniature street sign with her name is still tacked to the wall next to a postcard from Orlando.

“You’re gonna be number 30. Here, I’ll show you where the coffee maker is,” Mrs. Percy says.

***

Now, for the first part of my shift, I’m in the office with a couple of other people before they clock out. There’s Maggie, a 60-year old former flower child from Brooklyn, and Ingrid, a kind and soft-spoken Filipino woman. Sometimes, over the course of our small talk, they’d bring up Cheryl. They’d tell me some of the bizarre conversations she’d get into with the survey takers and the sassy responses she had for the excessively rude ones. Other than that though, they didn’t know much about her. She livened up the place, they said. These women knew Cheryl well enough to know her humor, but not enough to feel any deep pain at her loss, which I thought was interesting. In all honesty, that made her the perfect friend in my mind- a highlight reel of her mortal existence. I start thinking that’s actually the kind of person I want be: the guy everyone likes, but no one will ever feel pain at losing. I want to be like the ice cream samples you get on those little wooden spoons. Sample tastes of sample people with sample lives. Vanilla lives, strawberry lives, even mint chocolate chip lives- everything on a stick that you can throw away in an undersized trash can by the door when you’re done. Don’t feel pressured to commit. They’ll always be here in case you want to try them again, sitting under cold glass so you can see what you’re getting yourself into beforehand. Trial periods of life. Trial periods- just like my job here.

Now, being cooped up in a dark office till the wee hours of the night starts to do a number on your sanity after a while. After a few days, I slowly start coming to grips with the fact that I’m sitting in a dead woman’s chair making cold calls. With that sobering realization, I start letting my mind wander outside of myself more than usual. Eventually, I start thinking that half of the people I’m calling are dead too- like I’m conducting a seance from my swivel chair. Maybe the sound waves from the phone are beginning to travel through the ether, through Heaven and Hell itself, to the dearly departed. I guess Heaven and Hell would have different area codes, but they aren’t in my little booklet of reference numbers, so I can’t be sure. I’ve become an angel on accident, carrying out God’s divine plan right here from my cubicle. I’m showing my condolences for people I don’t even know and, in my mind, I begin to see the places where my phone calls are going: the shallow grave of a John Doe on the side of I-40, the purse of a girl who just overdosed, the open casket viewing for a father of four. I start hearing the ringing all the time too. The fucking ringing. When I drove home after work, I’d turn the radio up as far as it could go so I wouldn’t hear the ringing. After a few more nights, I began to hear the ringing everywhere- from my car radio, from the PA system at the grocery store, from the drive-thru window speaker box.

One night, my phone woke me up around 3am. I looked at my screen and saw a number I didn’t know. I passed it off as a butt dial, until I started thinking: “what if the dead are starting to call me?” Realizing that, I threw the phone at the wall and just looked at it as it vibrated across my bedroom floor. It kept ringing and I imagined the shallow breathing of the undead on the other line. Then it stopped, then it beeped: one new voicemail. I fumbled around in my nightstand and grabbed my rosary beads from under a small pile of condoms. I held the beads tight and listened to the voicemail. It was just my mom. She was calling me from Key West to tell me the bar she was at was playing our favorite Jimmy Buffet song.

Eventually, I start worrying I’m going to end up calling my aunt who died while I was working at the call center. If only I had called her to conduct a survey, I thought, maybe I could have saved her. They found her on the porch. My mom said she had choked to death. When she told me that, all I could think about was this girl I had slept with one time who wanted me to choke her while we had sex. I remember just sort of placing my hand on top of her neck because I didn’t feel comfortable doing it. She said all these weird things to me while I tried to avoid eye contact with her. Afterwards, I remember lying to her that I forgot I had work in the morning so I could leave. I came home and took a lukewarm shower. I never saw her again after that night. She called me a few nights after that, like how the undead would start doing, but eventually the calls stopped. Now all I can see is my aunt’s face on that girl; that girl’s face on my aunt.I felt dirty, like I have old cigarettes sitting in my stomach. I didn’t know what to say to my mom. I just hear her crying on the other end and after a while her crying sounds like the dial tone from my cubicle phone. I figured maybe I should ask my mom the survey questions to make her feel better: “What do you consider the most important aspect of your dead sister: accessibility? cleanliness? diversity of experiences?…Overall, how satisfied are you with your dead sister?…Don’t worry, at the end of the survey, you’ll have time to leave a comment for her. And let me just say again that the City sincerely appreciates your input on this matter.”

***

It’s been a few months since I worked at the call center, but I still get woken up in the middle of the night by numbers I don’t know. It’s a different number every time, and they never leave voicemails. I know it’s the dead calling me. They’re calling me from beyond the grave to come join them- to join Cheryl and my Aunt Sue Sue. I watch the phone vibrate then go still. Somewhere an angel or a demon is writing down “RF30.” I know they’ll never stop calling me. I know eventually I’m going to have to answer that phone call too, but I’m not scared of it any more.

Why? Because even in Hell, I know I’m going to get four bars of service.

I snap my eyes open. My therapist, a middle-aged white woman with too much jewelry, is sitting across from me with a clipboard and pen. She’s been expecting me.

“You did a great job, Drew. I’m very proud of you and I appreciate you.” I roll my sleepy eyes and look past her- past the framed degrees on the wall, past the fake fern in the corner, past her politically correct jargon. “You’re in a safe place now.” She puts a cold, wrinkly hand on my forearm.

Apparently, she had just guided me through what I’m told was a small childhood trauma. It’s part of her psychoanalytic treatment: going back into the past to see where certain issues originated. I’m not really sure what kind of progress we made though.

I was just imagining what it’d be like to fuck two girls at the same time.

Repressed memories must be a lot like not being able to cum, only for years on end. I look at the clock. There’s ten minutes left in our session- enough for a quickie.

“Alright. I need you to do one more thing for us before we leave, Drew. I want you to go to the special place we talked about on that worksheet I gave you. Go there and describe it for me- how peaceful and happy it is.” She says this with gushing sincerity.

It’s the summer before my junior year in college. My behavior has been “odd” the past couple of months, so my parents got me five sessions at a local therapist to figure out why I’ve been acting strange.

I’m Dr. Sitzer’s last client of the day, so I imagine by the time she gets to me (after a morning full of rape victims and recent divorcees), I’m sort of a cake walk. My problems are normal white suburbanite problems, meaning they’re not real problems at all. I figured I’m probably an open and shut case: maybe a lack of closure from someone’s death or some body image issues stemming from being a chubby adolescent. We even have a shot at convincing me I’m gay if she gives me enough worksheets about it. Nothing concrete yet though, no skeletons in the closet- just a wishbone or two. My routine these days is pretty much equal parts masturbation and Xbox- what could be the problem?

“Close your eyes, Drew. I want you to describe your special place to me. What’s it look like?”

I decide to humor her.

“I’m in a field in the farmland outside my house. There are cows in the distance mooing.”

“Cows?” she interrupts.

“Yes, cows. This is my happy place and I want to have cows.” I retort with my eyes closed.

“Sorry. Continue,” she says.

“It’s dusk in October or early November. The air smells like grass and cinnamon. There’s a cool breeze blowing through the tall grass. There’s no one around for miles and no one needs me for anything. I’m alone. There’s an abandoned barn with a halfpipe inside down a dirt road. I’m walking to it. I’m going to skate it till late at night then sleep under the stars. Everything is serene. Everything is calm. Everything is peace.”

Everything is okay.

#

“Wake the fuck up, princess!”

I snap my eyes open. A young, grizzled line cook is squinting at me like I’m some kind of alien. He slides a bowl of cheese covered tater tots across the stainless steel server window. I can’t imagine how someone’s stomach can break this down.

He shoves a paper ticket in my face. “Stop fingering yourself and get this shit to 415.”

I watch as he turns around and stands in front of the fryer. Braydon, the cook, is a few years older than me: sinewy, with a mop top of silky black hair stuffed under his yellowed Florida Gators hat. Sometimes I believed that the hat was a part of Braydon- that if I managed to knock it off somehow, he would crumble into dust. I’d be the one who’d have to sweep him up though. I’d get the broom from the supply closet and collect his essence alongside stale Italian bread crumbs, then dump him in the alley behind the restaurant. It would be an oddly befitting funeral rite, but Braydon would have wanted it that way.

Braydon turns back around. “Why are you still standing there, Shakespeare? Looking for literary symbolism in that food ticket? Oh wait, nah, I know what you want,” he grabs his crotch with the bottom of his apron. “You want some of this dick- don’t ya, baby?”

I shake my head and stab the ticket. Braydon is telling the other cooks how grande his cajones are in broken Spanglish as I swing the door open into the dining room.

Everywhere I look- bodies. Not people- bodies, fucking flesh on flesh. Legs, guts, asses, tits, dicks, heads- parts. They seemed to be stacked on top of each other, how Picasso must have seen them. They seem to spawn from everywhere. Dense. Loud. Bodies. Raleigh’s middle class in concentrate form- like the industrial tubs of garlic powder in the pantry downstairs.

This isn’t my happy place.

I try and sift through the nooks and the crannies- through the starched sleeves and the BoHo blouses of the dining room. Every now and then one of those sleeves and blouses belongs to someone I knew and they’ll stop me. Perhaps we had graduated together or lived in the dorms sophomore year. They’d introduce their girlfriend, they’d tell me about how they just started at Cisco, they’d ask what kind of beer this is. They’d remember me: the smart one in class, the creative guy, that person everyone always liked. The one who’s going to get you another beer, the one who’s going to clean up your girlfriend’s vomit, the one who will be sweeping Braydon’s ashes in an alleyway while you’re getting a blowjob in your condo.

Food dropped off, I return downstairs. The kitchen has died down now- no orders, no smoke, no profanities in whatever language. It’s 11:45pm. I grab the mac n’ cheese Braydon begrudgingly gives me- “fucking vegetarian,” and eat next to the water heater in the basement. Table for one.

I come back up and wash my plate against the dishwasher’s insistence: “No, Maria- es nada. Nada.” My back against the counter, I watch the kitchen- chef taking off his apron, Francisco idly talking to Eduardo as they chop cabbage, Danny blasting dubstep on the little radio perched precariously above a bowl of raw ground beef, Braydon trying to push my buttons about something.

“You know, believe it or not, Drew, I actually like you,” he says.

“Tough love, right?” I say.

He chuckles to himself. “Aww, you’re the only guy on the server staff who actually has a brain in his fucking skull and can take a hit. You know what arugala looks like and you work like a Goddamn Mexican- I admire that.” Francisco and Eduardo stop to leer at Braydon. “That’s a compliment,” he says to me before addressing the two in the back. “Un cumplido, hombres. Un cumplido.”

“Yeah. Well, apparently no one else seems to care much about that,” I say.

“Oh, are we gonna fiddle our dicks about how bad we feel now?” Braydon wipes his hands on his apron.

“I’m not trying to get sympathy, man. Just saying.”

“You came to the wrong place if you want sympathy, veg head.” He puts his apron on the counter and leans through the window. “Here’s your situation the way I see it: you’re working here. So, strike one. You have no real contacts here in Raleigh- and despite what they told you, that means you don’t have many prospects- doesn’t matter what shit they wrote on your degree, Good Will Hunting. The reason that fucktard from your psych class is getting fifty k a year is because his dad knew someone. Now you may know a lot of shit, but it ain’t about people- so that means you don’t know shit. Not your fault. You probably got some friends that have your back though, maybe there’s even a girl out there who’d actually want to fuck you more than once or twice, but for the most part, you’re also rolling solo and you’re starting to feel it. I know you don’t have money cause you make less than me and I’m broke.” Braydon bites his lip as if he’s doing the math in his head. “Yeah, man- you’re kinda fucked.”

For some reason his assertion awakens a deep insecurity inside me- something Freudian that I actually remember from psych class and fucktard doesn’t. Maybe it was something my therapist was trying to tap in to. “Why is all this happening to me? I played by the rules, man. I studied hard so I could be in the top ten percent of my class. I volunteered at homeless shelters. I never took shortcuts to anything. I always try to be the good guy. I did what I thought was right. I even put the fucking seat down when I go to a unisex bathroom. I did what I was supposed to do but nothing seems right.”

I look off into space. I’m trying to find my happy place, but I don’t hear any cows. “Why?”

For the first time, I had no real retort. Braydon’s words landed so heavy in my mind that my mouth couldn’t open. People had told me that before, but for some reason, I felt it hit me in the gut, right where my mac n’ cheese was beginning to fester. It was a back room sermon.

“Cause fuck you.”

The more I thought about it, the more that phrase grew to mean so much me. It became my “om”- my affirmation of faithlessness. I could imagine myself rocking back and forth holding a string of beads, counting how many times I said it- prostrating myself on piss soaked concrete to revere the fry cook’s gospel.

“Cause fuck you” became part of my vernacular. It got me through more of those treacherous nights at the bar- my safety word for when circumstance was whipping my ass too hard. It got me through days where I saw how heavy the world is- seeing homeless men sleep in church vestibules, wiping snot from some wheelchair confined kid’s nose, seeing people arrested in front of me. It answered all of life’s questions, at least to the point I could carry on- whether it was mass murders or getting cut off on the Beltline, the answer was reduced to the same tao- “cause fuck you.”

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Cause fuck you.

Why can’t I seem to get anything right?

Cause fuck you.

Why did my grandpa have to die that way?

Cause fuck you.

Why can’t I be with her?

Cause fuck you.

Why do I feel this way?

Cause fuck you.

Why am I so angry?

Cause fuck you.

Why am I so sad?

Cause fuck you.

Why do I not feel anything?

Cause fuck you.

My happy place is fading to black. No cows, no clandestine half pipe in an old barn, no cool autumn nights- just cold hard reality where people struggle, fuck, starve, bleed, and die. Where there’s war, rape, famine, fraud, and addiction. No cows, no reasons, no hope.

So then why continue, why go on- why live?

Cause fuck you- that’s why.

“Drew. Come back to me, Drew. Your session is over.”

#

Listen to This: “Incense and Peppermints”- Strawberry Alarm Clock, “Tears of a Clown”- Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, “Let It All Hang Out”- A.D.O.R.

Well, I haven’t written much on here in a while. It’s gotten about as many updates as a MySpace page. I considered this blog dead to me, and I really had no intention of writing on it again. Oh, now there’s been stuff to write about, there’s been plenty, but I didn’t write it here. It was confined to personal letters, notebook pages, and the back of my mind. I’m blowing it, but I’m that kind of guy who can get away with blowing it for longer than most. To be honest, I didn’t think I could write any more. I truly believed I had no longer had the ability, the ideas, or the drive. Why write?

It’s a good question. This first little chapter is going to be about asking ourselves questions.

Yet here I am, writing on the blog again- pouring my soul into paper cups for you all to sip while you wait for your Amazon order to go through or your porno to buffer. I appreciate your time- I really do. Below is the preface to a series I’m starting called “Disposable Hero.” I feel it describes me and a lot of other people like me very accurately. It’s about life. It’s about my life more specifically, but I hope you find it’s really about your life too. There will be updates on this series along with new posts and new fiction pieces as well.

So here it is, the first installment of Drew St.Claire’s “Disposable Hero.”

***

I walk into an elevator. There’s a man a handsome, middle-aged man in a suit. The doors stay open longer than normal and the man smiles. This whole scenario reminds me of when you get to the front of the line on the Tower of Terror- a little bell hop smiling as he helps you on. I step inside and the doors close.

“So what do you do?” the man in the suit asks me.

He looks like my dad. All middle-aged men in suits look like my dad. Everyone says how much I look like my dad. I am a middle-aged man in a suit.

“Sir?” he asks again.

I pause for a bit. “Honestly…I don’t know.” I say it like I just learned English earlier that day.

“Excuse me?” he asks, bewildered.

The doors open and I jump out like the elevator is going to plummet behind me. I imagine looking at the security tape later and finding out there was no one on the elevator.

I missed a key opportunity to give what’s called your “elevator speech.” If you were on an elevator with someone for about thirty seconds and had to introduce yourself and what you’re all about, this is what you’d say. It’s basically an obituary you write for yourself. Whenever I can’t think of what to say for my elevator speech, I imagine a man in a ski mask holding a gun to my head yelling to me, “Why shouldn’t I fucking kill you right this minute?” It’s a perfect writing exercise. Lately, I can’t help but feel that ski mask dude is following me around asking that same thing. When I wake up, he’s sitting across the bed from me. He’s sitting behind me as I eat my hipster granola cereal, he’s sitting next to me on the bus, he’s pissing next to me at the urinal. He’s tucking me in at night and reading me stories from a big pop-up book about the ways he could off me. He’s always asking that question too:

“Why shouldn’t I fucking kill you?”

He’s the best life coach one could ask for.

Needless to say, it’s hard to keep your cool when you feel like you always have a .45 pointed at the back of your head- but I’m trying. We’re all trying. Each of us filling out applications, sitting at desks, blowing paychecks. Hell, maybe some of us don’t even have that to preoccupy us. But all the while, that guy is following us around asking us why he shouldn’t kill us, like he’s some kind of fucked up guardian angel. He’s our malevolent spirit animal- and the funny thing is, he has a point and we should listen to him. So, just to reiterate:

“Why shouldn’t I fucking kill you?”

I’ve been thinking long and hard about it, but I still can’t think of an answer. I’m living on borrowed time, like the other seven billion of us. I want to do so much- to learn, to create, to help, to love…to live.

“I want to live!” I yell back at the ski mask guy. He smiles, his mask smiles. He pulls the trigger. It wasn’t loaded. Then he’s gone, just like the man in the suit on the elevator.

It’s about time for my phone to be upgraded. That may not seem like much, but when you consider it, this is a pretty sizable milestone all things considered. I remember getting this phone, an iPhone 3GS, at the very end of junior year for my 21st birthday. Since I’ve gotten it, it’s become an extension of me- despite the fact I never thought I’d use it. Well, I did use it- and I used it a fair amount. It’s captured a lot of moments- graduation, girls, bonfires out in the country, lonely walks in downtown, everything. Our phones have become our little worry stones- Generation Y’s baby blankets. So, as I thumbed through these pictures, I decided to blog one of them every few days until my new phone comes in. So here’s the first installment of “From the Vault.”

*

These aren’t the drunks you’re looking for…

Here’s the third ever photo I took on my iPhone. I figured it’s a good one to start with. It’s one of those pictures you’re really proud of simply because you captured a rare moment, something that you probably won’t see again. It’s not often you see a fucking storm trooper walking around downtown after all.

To understand this photo, you have to go back to the night before.

It was my 21st birthday- the day the government deems you mature enough to drink alcohol and the day you prove to them by your actions that you really aren’t. I came back to Raleigh to get my first legal drink at the Raleigh Times with some friends- something I said I’d do since I first got to State. I don’t remember much about getting to the Times (not because I was drunk, but because I’m a space cadet and can barely remember someone’s name), but I recollect getting a bottle of Christian Brothers brandy from the liquor store because I thought brandy was classy. Somehow we end up at the bar- a renovated newspaper building that has since become the hipster mecca of the Southeast. I look at the menu and it becomes obvious what my first legal beer is going to be- Lucifer. I don’t care what it tastes like or who makes it or what sort of food you pair it with- this beer is called Lucifer and I have to drink it just because of that.

It’s strange the clarity you gain from a few pints- despite the fact that your physical coordination sags, often times your mind focuses a bit more on reality, as hazy as it may become. This is prime time for talks about politics, religion, and how people really feel about each other. A fifth of whiskey absolves sins and affirms lovers like few things in this world do. It’s strange that these discussions have to come under the influence of the booze or the bong (I’m guilty of both from time to time), but perhaps that’s the only time we feel safe to truly express ourselves- when we feel everyone else is off guard. We’re so selfish with our true emotions.

Acquaintances drink coffee. Friends drink beer.

Anyways, back to the insight you get from putting on the beer goggles. I noticed things differently after these first few beers. This was my first time getting drunk after all, despite my assertion that I was seasoned from glasses of dinner wine and an Irish heritage. I noticed lots of things I didn’t like. I noticed the way one of my then friends was flirting with my then girlfriend and realized that this was going to be the last birthday we’d celebrate together. I noticed half of the people around me I didn’t even really like all that much. I noticed that my mustache looked a little creepy after all. I noticed that more drinks made me forget all those things.

Somehow I end up in a parking lot later that night to be driven home. I spot a parking barricade and, in my state, know that I simply must vault over it. I remember hearing my friend Kieran’s voice telling me not to do it, but when you’re hammered, voices of reason sound like car alarms- you hear them in the distance, but you never check to see if it actually is meant for you. I fall like a sack of bricks onto my hand. I don’t feel a thing though and I could care less about the pain this is going to bring me later in the morning. Caring about fair weather friends, a cheating girlfriend, and sprained wrists stops somewhere around seven beers for me.

I spend the night in my friend Mel’s room because my then girlfriend doesn’t want to sleep with me- something “three beers Drew” would find odd but “seven beers Drew” just sees as more room to sprawl out on the bed. This is by far one of the most hellish nights I’ve had. Mel has this sort of hippie chic to her room, so there’s a million Indian and Arab inspired pillows and rugs around the room and all of them itch. The AC is out too- because why the fuck not, you know? I take off everything but my boxers to stay cool (I figured having my balls on Mel’s bedspread would just make it awkward), but that doesn’t help. I lay staring at the ceiling fan spin, in a hot itchy room and I realize Dante’s Inferno has been updated to fit modern life.

I get no sleep and am woken up by the girls wanting to get donuts and coffee. I stomach a few cream-filled’s and sip a white chocolate mocha as we drive back to the house. Then I spot it. I can’t believe my eyes. Has sleep deprivation and alcohol fucked with my senses enough to cause me to hallucinate? No. For one of the few times in life, it isn’t too good to be true- there’s a fucking storm trooper standing on the corner of Fayetteville Street across from a souvlaki stand. This is the cosmos’s way of telling me it has a sense of humor. I found a glitch in the matrix.

And there you have it.

Two years later I’m writing about this photo. Two years later that storm trooper has unwittingly made themself a book end in one of the most pivotal periods of my life. Two years later I’m smiling more at this photo than when I took it.

I’m a member of the Flying Saucer’s UFO club and that explains a lot about my life right now to be honest.

The Flying Saucer is a bar downtown with a vaguely Germanic/Nordic flair to it. Cute girls in short plaid skirts take your order for one of the 200+ beers available at any given time. On the walls are these gold plates with people’s names and witty sayings: “Carpe Beerium”, “All the Rum’s Gone”, “I’m with stupid”, and every other tired slogan someone somewhere thinks is ingenious. You get one of these plates by joining the UFO club and drinking 200 of those various beers. I figure “what the hell” and forked over twenty bucks to get a T-shirt and the chance to destroy my liver. Last night, I’m casually sipping number 186 with my roomie when I bum into an old friend from the early years of the skate club. He tells me how he loves the blog- that what I have to say is so insightful and raw. I’m always surprised just to hear anyone reads it, let alone that they like it. I figured I need to update it, so, here I am, writing a quick post with a pimento cheese sandwich sitting in my belly soaking up beers 188-185. I still haven’t thought of what I want to go on my plate. That’s serious stuff too- it’s pretty much the only goal I have in life at the moment. It’s a more worthwhile goal than many of the ones I hear other people have.

#

There have been some changes since the last post. I’m now (mostly) a vegetarian, I work at a bar called the Busy Bee on the weekends to make extra money, and I’ve bought lots of shit I don’t really need off of the Internet with that extra money.

I think it’s not so much the actual item we like getting in the mail, it’s the act of waiting for something. We’re guaranteed to have our patience rewarded. We know the end result of our virtue won’t be in vain. We get a knock at the door and someone wants us to sign for something- it’s a taste of being a celebrity without the pressure. It’s about as thrilling a feeling you can get these days.

#

The other day, I pick up my tips from the bar. I do this on Monday because I volunteer at a place near Busy Bee and I have a break for lunch. I like watching the businessmen while I eat my veggie sandwich or spring roll- it’s the closest thing you have to bird watching in Raleigh. You can tell which ones are more important by the color of the tie on their chest- just like birds.

I walk through Moore Square on my way back to the volunteer place. Moore Square is where the homeless in Raleigh hang out during the day and it’s pretty stupid to walk through here with 150 bucks cash in your back pocket but I’ve never claimed to be smart. It’s worth the potential mugging. I’ve seen guys in FUBU jerseys preaching the Gospel, girls beat each other up, and a guy try to fight a lawnmower here. Today, the weather is overcast and windy. It’s just the right temperature too- if you think hard enough it can feel cold or warm, depending on what you want. It reminds me of the beach. If you don’t think too hard, the buses sound like waves crashing and the car horns sound like sea gulls. I imagine the water is just behind the parking deck, that I could climb up to the top and dive in and swim to the NC State Bell Tower. I pick up one of the Ice House tall boys lying on the ground next to a sleeping homeless man to see if I can hear the ocean, but all I hear is crying.

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At work, I sneak into the refrigerator when I need a break. It’s cold in here obviously, so I try to stay in as long as I can, sort of like a reverse sauna. One day, while I was resting against an industrial size block of cheddar cheese, I come up with an idea. Hallucinate with ideas is a better phrase to use actually. I decide that I’m going to try and make this hallucination a reality because I have nothing else to do besides dodge work in a refrigerator, so I enlist a few others that vibe the idea, teach myself various job skills by watching YouTube, and get to work the following weeks. You’ll hear about it soon, but I can say it’ll be the biggest thing I’ve ever thought up thus far- bigger than this blog, bigger than the HYPE Collective.

I came up with this cool little saying too: “Failure is the raw material of success.” That’s fortune cookie material.

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That’s all I want to write now.

Listen to This: “Coast to Coast”- Elliot Smith, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)”- Melanie, “Murderers”- John Frusciante, “Mother”- Danzig

Here’s the conclusion of “Why There Aren’t Any Wolves in the Chinese Zodiac.”

*

I had been looking forward to the first weekend in February for some time. This was “best weekend ever” for all intents and purposes. Thursday I play pool, Friday I go downtown, and Saturday I have a party for the HYPE Collective. It’s the best kind of busy you can be. To make for an interesting story, we’re doing to skip around to different points in time.

*

“You know, me and Alanna were talking about you the other day, Drew…” I look up at my friend Molly as she talks to me. I kind of look through her because I’m sleep deprived. You can look through anything if you try hard enough. Behind her, a local folk rock band is setting up and testing their microphones.

“…and we both we’re like, ‘Drew just does so much- he paints, he skates, he writes, he starts things, he goes here, he goes there, he does this, he does that…'” There’s an upright bass playing a lick and a banjo playing chords. Molly’s voice sounds like the intercom in a grocery store.

“…you just…you do whatever the fuck you want.”

I smile.

Everything’s in tune.

This is a huge compliment- probably the best thing anyone’s said to me in over a year. That’s as good as “I love you” as far as I’m concerned right now.

I thank Molly, telling her it’s not really like that, that I don’t really do whatever I want- but I don’t mean that entirely either. The band starts playing. It’s an indie folk rock outfit- what me and my friend Special K call whiskey town music, or Raleigh rock. Acoustic guitars, maybe some fiddles, and crooning about loves lost or drunken fist fights- it’s nice, honest music. The band and I are both here (at Tir Na Nog Irish Pub) for the same reason: 88.1 WKNC’s day party. Every year the student radio station does a big concert, Double Barrel Benefit, and this year they decided to have local artists, bands, and craftspeople come out in addition to the bigger name bands playing that evening.

But I’m out of place.

Everyone here is legit- they’ve got pamphlets, they’ve got T-shirts, they’ve got business cards. I have a loose-leaf paper sign I made with a sharpie in the parking deck. I can’t compete with pamphlets. I’m in over my head. I’ve got everyone believing I’m a painter and a business owner- that I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve missed my calling as a con man. I stay here at Tir Na Nog for the next five hours watching bands play and watching the other businesses hand out their pamphlets. One of the people in our collective comes by, Kim, with her boyfriend Ryan, who I know through skating. They go a whole five minutes without making out and that’s probably the most successful part of the day party in my opinion. Better than the people who come by and look at my paintings and Kim’s drawings. They like the “Raleigh” one, the “Friendship” one is funny, and the “Origami Crane in a Cage” is cool- that’s the consensus. That’s what I’d write on my pamphlets if I had any. But my business cards come in 16×20 sheets of canvas or thick stacks of 8.5×11 office paper. I do whatever the fuck I want, right? I now realize the only difference between advertising and graffiti is who pays for your paint.

*

“Thank you for coming to Food Lion. Your total tonight is going to be…” the cashier stops for a second to comprehend the number.

It’s already come up on the debit card machine and I’m smiling. It’s probably as close to lottery numbers as I’ll ever get.

“…six dollars and sixty six cents,” I finish for her. Apparently, all I need to summon Satan is bag of Solo cups and two Easter egg Reese’s cups.

That’s not a number you just pass over, so I interpret it as a sign. Tonight’s HYPE art party will either be wildly successful or spectacularly horrible. Satan is a “go hard or go home” kind of entity.

*

Me outside of the gallery, stoked out of my face.

First Friday. I feel stupid whenever this day rolls around. I try to round people up to go look at art and drink with me and ride bikes. I try to just get people outside. Every now and then it works. Most of the time it doesn’t and I just sort of walk around downtown, but that’s cool too. I usually have more fun by myself anyways. You always have a way of making yourself laugh. This First Friday I manage to get an avowed disliker of First Friday downtown though- my roomie Charles. I even get him to ride our bikes down there too. We pedal around downtown. It’s nice. I like being mobile. Apparently, my mom kept a baby book of me for a little bit, and one of the entries said I was fascinated with anything had wheels or moved. I guess that’s followed through into adulthood. I take point on where we go. I lead the way here and there- and over to Visual Art Exchange, where one of my paintings is hanging up. Everyone’s milling about outside- either middle aged couples or hipster kids- people that drink Chardonnay or people that drink PBR. I go to the door and it’s locked. I’m bummed for a second, because I’m not going to see my painting (I could see it through the window though.) However, then I think about one of my favorite rappers or death metal bands in the same situation. They wouldn’t have even cared. It’s even cooler that you didn’t come to your own show- that’s boss. The rest of the night goes like this: the Fish Market has a “tell your deepest secrets” board and one girl admits to having a thing for skaters. I see tons of people I know. Everyone is hyped on HYPE which gets me hyped. I ride over to Neptune’s to meet up with homies. One girl just hauls off and makes out with another dude on a dare. One girl is hula hooping around the bar pissing Special K’s girlfriend off. The rest of us dance. My sea captain’s hat gets passed around. We go over to Busy Bee, but we never make it inside.

*

“Alright, hey, everyone shut up for a second!” The trance music cuts out and about forty people look in my direction. I can see everyone’s faces despite the whole room being in black light. I soak in the fact that everyone is listening to what I have to say- that feeling never gets old. “The keg is out. Which one of you wants another one?” Everyone cheers. The music comes back to life and everyone resumes what they were doing: chatting, making out, smoking, drinking, dancing, waiting in line for the bathroom. The HYPE Art party is successful beyond my expectations.

“You know, you’re responsible for all this,” my friend Hannah yells in my ear as we’re leaning against the living room wall.

I look around the room. She points to a couple making out on the couch.

“That guy is so happy right now. He probably heard about this party, came with his friends, and look at him now- making out with this cute girl. He owes all that to you.” Hannah looks back to me. “If they make a kid tonight- that means you’re a godfather, buddy.”

The thought of being a godfather freaks me out. The thought of being anything freaks me out, really. It’s easier to pretend. In your mind, everything has a one hundred percent success rate and all the effort takes place instantaneously. You can take the standard package of successes and problems. I’m stupid for making my daydreams come true.

Hannah and me get to know each other a bit better (turns out we have a lot in common) until the party gets out of control. I can’t really recount it properly since I know family and friends read this blog, but let’s just leave it as “out of control.” There are people spray painting outside, there are people making out on the lawn, there are people just coming from off the street into the house. The idea of HYPE has made the long journey from idea to fruition. I’m one hell of a con man. I’ve created something and changed the course of history, however small a change it may be.

I do whatever the fuck I want.

*

That concludes “Why They Aren’t Any Wolves in the Chinese Zodiac.” I have to go get ready for a reading I’m doing at Irregardless Cafe tonight for Windhover’s Open Mic Night. Check back soon for more posts.